MetaTools gives families photo editing power using Kai's Photo Soap
Mom and Dad can now remove daughter's nose ring from family portrait
CARPINTERIA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 1997--MetaTools Inc., (Nasdaq:MTLS), the visual computing software company, Wednesday
announced the availability of Kai's Photo Soap, photo manipulation software for the home user.
Kai's Photo Soap offers an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that allows a novice to perform sophisticated image editing functions on family snapshots. Colorful controls and animated tools of Kai's Photo Soap allow for instant cropping, touch up and color correction.
``This is the most fun you can have with the traditionally tedious tasks of cleaning up pictures -- and for just $49. Now, zooming in is silky smooth. Pick up a giant brush and paint skin-tone corrections, and then unpaint them with a big eraser,'' said Kai Krause, MetaTools' chief science and design officer. ``It's never been this easy before -- even with software 10 times its price.''
Kai's Photo Soap follows Kai's Power GOO, the best-selling and award-winning funware graphics product, as the second consumer product launched by MetaTools. Known for their simple, easy-to-understand user interfaces, MetaTools' products combine sophisticated mathematics, one-step image editing and realtime rendering to give powerful computer software tools to the novice and professional user.
Tools of the Trade
Kai's Photo Soap comes with a comprehensive set of life-like animated tools, such as pens, pencils, brushes and erasers, which can be stored in virtual desk drawers. The user picks the easiest, most logical tool for the job and runs it quickly over the photo, smoothing shadows or coloring the grass green. Uniquely, the tools take on real-life characteristics.
For instance, the paint brushes ``bend'' just like a real brush pushed against a hard surface and pencils flip over in order to use the eraser. Some tools offer special one-step uses, such as the red-eye removal brush.
Unlike other existing software, the Kai's Photo Soap desktop mimics how people actually work in real life. After finishing with a tool, just drop it anywhere on the desktop. For example, a left-handed person may leave more frequently used brushes and pens scattered on the left side of the desktop.
Messy users may have brushes dropped right where they last used them, while another user may line up the brushes neatly according to size and color. An auto-save function saves the desktop just as it looked last, or an auto clean function sweeps the tools back in the virtual drawers.
Soap Washes Away Wrinkles and Other Imperfections
Kai's Photo Soap makes it easy to embark on the shoeboxes of photos in everyone's closet. In just a couple of minutes, mom can change the color of her son's red eyes in a little league photo or ``heal'' the scar seen on her daughter's class picture. Scratches and tears on antique family photos now repair in a matter of seconds.
Soap's many ``clean up'' uses include:
-- Newlyweds can repair priceless photos by correcting over- and
under-exposed wedding photos.
-- Real estate brokers can paint the sky blue on house photos taken on cloudy days and paint-out unsightly lawn furniture.
-- Business professionals can eliminate under-eye circles for company
directory photos and smooth wrinkles on CEO portraits.
-- Teenagers can remove acne and blemishes from embarrassing high
school yearbook photographs.
-- Moms can remove teenagers' nose ring from family portraits in order
to send to grandma.
-- Novice photographers can lighten sunsets, brighten basement photos
and remove red-eye.
-- Divorcees can erase their ex-spouses from family photos and rub-out
the tattoo of their former partner's name.
-- Genealogy buffs can restore heirloom photos that have cracked and
yellowed over the years.
Input and Creative Output
Kai's Photo Soap works with many file types and users can scan photos, pull pictures from the Web, take photographs with a digital camera or have snapshots digitized at nearly any photo finishing store. Supplied backgrounds and photo-realistic clip art give an amateur the polish of a professional. Finished projects can be displayed as calendars, greeting cards, screen savers, on Web pages, printed to color printers or output at Kinko's or other print shops.
System Requirements
Minimum system requirements include Windows 95/NT 4.0 Pentium processor, 16- or 24-bit video, 8 MB RAM, 20 MB free hard drive space and CD-ROM drive, or Power Macintosh, System 7.5, 16- or 24-bit video, 8 MB RAM, 20 MB free hard drive space and CD-ROM drive. Kai's Photo Soap is optimized for Intel Pentium processor with MMX technology.
Pricing and Availability
Kai's Photo Soap is now available on a hybrid CD-ROM for both Mac and PC with a U.S. MSRP of $49.95. It consists of one CD-ROM and is available at more than 8,000 retail locations worldwide or direct from MetaTools on the Internet at metatoys.metatools.com or by calling 800/472-9025. An OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version is also currently available.
About MetaTools
MetaTools, the visual computing software company, designs, develops, publishes, markets and supports software tools for creating, editing and manipulating computer graphic images, digital art and Internet/on-line content for Windows, Macintosh and other computing systems. Real Time Geometry Corp., MetaTools' advanced 3-D research lab based in Princeton, N.J., develops innovations related to the creation, rendering and display of 3-D images including dynamic scaling of image resolution.
Working with distributors in North America, Europe and Asia, Central and Latin America, MetaTools professional and consumer software is available in more than 50 countries. MetaTools is located in Santa Barbara County at 6303 Carpinteria Ave., Carpinteria, Calif. 93013; Tel.: 805/566-6200; Fax: 805/566-6385; MetaTools International Ltd. is located at Wilson House, Fenian St., Dublin, Ireland; Tel: 353 (1) 662-9333; Fax: 353 (1) 662-9334; World Wide Web server:
metatools.com .
Kai's Power GOO and Kai's Photo Soap are trademarks of MetaTools Inc. All other names are either registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. |
